It is common practice to affix small firing tips, such as those made from precious metals, to spark plug electrodes. Such firing tips are often in a ball or spherical form, prior to attachment, and are stored in some type of ball feeder or other part storage device. During manufacturing, the small precious metal balls are provided by the ball feeder and are positioned on a spark plug electrode, after which a welding device moves into place to weld the ball to the electrode. Most ball welding systems of this type utilize gravity to position and/or locate the small precious metal balls on the spark plug electrode.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that conventional ball welding systems, like that described above, can face certain challenges in high-precision, high-volume manufacturing environments. For instance, due to the small size of the precious metal balls and the spark gaps involved, extremely accurate positioning is usually required. Such accuracy can sometimes be difficult to achieve at a high-volume manufacturing pace, particularly when using ball welding systems that rely on gravity to position and/or locate the precious metal balls on the spark plug electrodes.